


borderline

by firstaudrina



Category: GLOW (TV 2017)
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Emotional Baggage, F/F, to put it mildly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 10:48:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16931865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: Debbie and Ruth have bad history with parties.





	borderline

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AntigravityDevice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntigravityDevice/gifts).



> This is set after Season 2, so all current canon applies (with a little tweaking). Writing this fic ended up being a really nice surprise for me, and I was glad to have the opportunity to get to know these characters in a new way. Your letter was really helpful and it seems like we have similar taste, so I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. :)

Somehow the gym looks even more drab and depressing than usual with twinkle lights tossed over the ropes. The holiday party was impromptu, and it shows despite the efforts to cheer up the space. A trip the nearest gas station yielded a few shiny holographic Santa cut-outs that are already peeling off the walls, and the girls went a little crazy with a can of spray-on snow. A folding table holds a box of off-brand cookies, a tiny _Charlie Brown_ tree, and a menorah courtesy of Melrose. It’s electric; three of the candles won’t turn on. 

Despite that, Debbie seems to be the only one who isn’t feeling festive. The show went well and they’re all still in costume, tipsy on hasty cocktails and high on adrenaline. Rhonda is leading what appears to be a Belinda Carlisle singalong while dangerously waving around a formerly-full bottle of peppermint Schnapps. There’s cheer to be had. And Debbie does feel like a Christmas tree all on her own, star-spangled from head to toe. 

But she has bad history with parties, especially when Ruth is involved. 

It’s worse now that they’re no longer avoiding each other outside of the ring. Debbie wants to play the ice queen, solid and impenetrable, but you can only have someone’s thighs around your neck so many times before developing a little camaraderie. Especially when you already had it once. Even trampled, there’s something there. The empty shell of what was once something.

Debbie promises herself that she’ll finish this drink and then call a cab home, but once it’s done she doesn’t go anywhere. She stands there listening to Bash ramble without hearing him. She peels off her false eyelashes and drops them into the empty paper cup. But she stays, and when she looks up to find Ruth hopefully holding up a lipstick red drink, Debbie wonders if that wasn’t what she was waiting for.

“Jenny made it, so you don’t have to worry about there being arsenic in it or anything!” Ruth trills, but immediate regret writes itself across her face so comically that Debbie has to gag on a laugh. “I’m sorry, I have no idea why I said that, I would never poison you, _obviously_.” 

“Yeah, if someone was going to be handing out Drano margaritas, we know who it’d be.” Debbie takes the drink and swirls it around. There’s some stray glitter floating at the top, which isn’t promising. 

“Terrifyingly specific,” Ruth says, eyebrows arching up towards her hair-sprayed hairline. 

“Three a.m. with a crying baby gets dark.” But after one truly repugnant sip, Debbie flushes with sudden embarrassment. She shakes her head, eyes closed, and waves a hand vaguely. “Obviously I’m not going to — it’s just — I’m kidding.” 

Soft, Ruth says, “I figured.”

And something about her easy acceptance makes Debbie mad — that Ruth would make allowances for her sharpness, maybe. Or that it’s the way they might have joked before but it doesn’t work anymore, can’t ever work again. “So where’s the camera guy? Is he going to drive in for Christmas?” 

“Russell.” There’s amusement in her voice now that is _definitely_ infuriating. “We’re, um. Reassessing?” 

Something prickles along Debbie’s skin from the center of her chest outward. “Are you asking me or telling me?”

Ruth smiles and rolls her eyes. “We’re reassessing.” 

“Sorry to hear that,” Debbie says, so perfunctory that it makes Ruth laugh. 

“You were never his biggest fan, huh?”

“I wasn’t planning a parade or anything, but he wasn’t… I’m glad you were —” She clears her throat. “I know you liked him, so.” More measured, “I am sorry.” 

Ruth tilts her head slightly and searches Debbie’s face. “Thanks.” She opens her mouth, hesitates, then says, “Wanna steal the Schnapps and get weird?”

That idea could not be worse. 

Debbie throws back what’s left in the paper cup and grimaces. “Fuck yes.”

The first celebratory round is a group effort, all of them standing in a circle and toasting shots of what ends up tasting a lot like candy cane lighter fluid. And it feels good: everyone laughing, music loud, Bash inexplicably drunk-crying when a Roxette song comes on, Arthie and Yolanda running through their entire dream ballet even though they’re so warm on liquor they can barely take two steps without tripping. They leave first, for obvious reasons, but Cherry and Keith aren’t far behind. The couples all have better things to do than get plastered after work, apparently. Even Jenny and her on-again/off-again boytoy are out to enjoy the Vegas strip before he makes the long drive back to L.A. Debbie is officially the bitch who stays late at parties so she doesn’t have to go back to an empty room. 

But Ruth’s that bitch, too. 

Rhonda drags Bash out once he becomes unmanageable. Melrose decides to lead an expedition to some new club and takes Stacey and Dawn with her under extreme duress. Carmen, Reggie, and Sheila are the next ones to go — Carmen and Reggie to get a responsible few hours of sleep before training starts bright and early, Sheila to do god knows what. Sam, seeming wary about the dwindling forces, sidles away not long after. Soon it’s just Debbie and Ruth and Tammé down in the dregs of the booze, laughing uproariously at jokes they can’t seem to remember later. They put Tammé into a cab around one, and then that’s it. It’s just the two of them. 

There is still a part of Debbie that dreads being alone with Ruth, and craves it.

They sit in the middle of the ring, boots off, legs in a loose drunk straddle stretch. Ruth’s hair is still standing straight up like she stuck her finger in an electrical socket, but she’s unfastened the neck of the leotard so it hangs open over her collarbones. No hickies to speak of now. Her brown-black lipstick was long ago smudged off, though it’s left a slightly graying stain at the corners of her mouth. Her eyeshadow is such a bright copper that it makes her eyes look absurdly blue even in the unflattering light. 

“Okay, don’t be weird about it,” Ruth says, smiling just a little, “But I was kind of using you as a shield against Sam.”

Debbie’s brows draw together. “Sam? Why would you — oh my god, _ew_.”

Ruth laughs again. It comes easier and easier every time she does it tonight, like the fear of Debbie lashing out lessens with each one she’s allowed. “Not _ew_ ,” she protests. “Just… _oh_ , and _maybe not_.”

Debbie snorts. “What’s with you and moustaches?” she asks, and Ruth loses it again. Debbie can’t help getting pulled along too, letting loose fresh laughter every time Ruth shrieks, “Moustaches!” in a new, ridiculous accent. She used to do that back when they would run lines together a million years ago: she’d try to make Debbie break by doing a different accent every time it was her turn. She was always so good. 

It makes Debbie a little sober, a little sad. “I take it Sam’s not why you’re _re_ assessing then.”

Ruth shakes her head. Every time she starts to speak — Debbie can see it — there’s a nanosecond of pause, like she’s replaying her words to look for booby traps first. Debbie hates it. She hates the fucking tremulous way Ruth looks at her now. 

“Spit it out, Destroyer.” 

Ruth meets her eyes. “Are you…assessing anyone lately? Is that weird for me to ask?”

“Yes.” Debbie takes a swig directly from a cheap bottle of white wine they’re sharing; it’s all that’s left. She’s going to feel like hell tomorrow. “And no. But reverse it.”

Ruth takes a moment to work that one around her tipsy brain. “I — Okay.” 

“I just —” She heaves a disgruntled sigh. “I’ve _tried_ , okay. It’s just like, what’s the point when I have this, like, fucking _tornado_ of loathing inside me that sucks up everything in its path? This giant hole got blasted in my life and Mark looks at me like I inconvenienced him by reacting to it while he gets to go on blithely fucking some secretary with a perm and I can barely even enjoy getting railed by a professional wrestler in his dressing room.” She holds up a hand. “Don’t ask. And don’t fucking apologize to me again. Just don’t.”

Ruth looks like she really, really wants to. There’s a war on her face between doing what she wants and what Debbie told her to do, an expression that has become so familiar Debbie could probably draw it from memory. If she could draw anything at all. Where once Ruth had been funny and charming and perennially stressed she is now only conflicted. Debbie hates that too, even if she thinks Ruth earned all that and more. So when Ruth finally makes up her mind about what to say and opens her mouth, Debbie surges up and pins her to mat. But there’s a flicker of panic in her eyes that has Debbie rolling off just as fast, onto her back, face crumpling.

“Goddammit,” she says. “Fuck. I’m sorry. Fuck.”

Ruth sits up and shakes it off. “You ever wonder if we do this instead of therapy?”

“Yeah, well, whatever we’re doing’s clearly not fucking working.”

Ruth pulls Debbie’s hand away from where it’s covering her eyes. “You caught me off guard,” she says simply. “Do it again.”

Her gaze is direct and plain. It’s like when they used to run scenes, like any rehearsal. You fuck it up, you do it again. 

It is undeniably dumb to grapple around half-costumed in the middle of the night after ingesting half a liquor store. But it feels good and familiar, the kind of thing they don’t have to second guess anymore; it’s a dance where they know all the steps, know where to put their hands and how to do each move. Debbie gets breathless faster than normal, too focused on Ruth’s knees digging into her ribs, her hands clutching at Debbie’s back. Even choreographed wrestling is a full contact sport, with no space to be embarrassed about wrapping your legs around someone or having their spandex-covered crotch in your face. But sometimes there’s space for other things. This time when Debbie flips Ruth onto her back, the satisfactory sound of the impact echoing, she sees that something else in Ruth’s expression. 

“Do you remember —” Debbie starts, but Ruth still has a tight fistful of her hair and she uses it to drag Debbie down before she can finish. And then Ruth kisses her. 

She takes big fucking swings, that woman. 

What Debbie intends to do, and probably should do, is pull back and say _Ruth what the fuck_ before they both file this away into that vault of shit they can’t talk about, to be excavated the next time someone breaks a bone. But what she does instead is loop her arm around Ruth’s neck and kiss her back, her fingers digging into Ruth’s tightly muscled thigh, tracing up the high cut of that metallic red lycra. 

This should feel weirder than it does, but maybe wrestling prepared them for this, too. Ruth gets Debbie onto her back again, rolls her over with legs locked tight around her and sits astride Debbie’s hips. She pushes the shoulder of her leotard down and Debbie finds herself reaching up to help, peeling it off until it can’t come off anymore, hands sliding up Ruth’s ribs to cup her tits. Which is sometimes Debbie never thought about doing before, definitely not, never, not once. Ruth’s mouth opens against hers, tastes like cheap booze and glitter. Debbie’s lipstick has left a red smear across Ruth’s lips and chin. It looks like how she feels, shocking and a little vicious.

Debbie’s costume is a more complicated matter of corsetry and layers, but clumsy hands manage to get rid of it anyway, wrest the constricting sparkly tights down until they’re a vaguely shimmering pile on the dusty surface of the ring. 

Is this dumb? Yes. Is this bad? Yes. Is Debbie tipping Ruth over so she can tongue the mole on the crease of her hip that always distracts Debbie during practice? Yes, yes, she is. And while she’s in the area, she might as well shift a few inches over and ease her tongue against Ruth’s pussy, find out what she tastes like. Ruth gasps, startled, and grabs Debbie’s hair in frantic fistfuls. Her thighs press in against Debbie’s ears, so she pushes one of Ruth’s legs up and out of the way, makes room for herself to settle in. Debbie feels no internal hesitation as she sinks two fingers into Ruth, sucks hard on her clit, drinks her up. Ruth knows how to go big or go home but no one barrels towards inevitability better than Debbie. 

She doesn’t feel anything except hungry, so maybe she understands for the very first time what led Ruth to do what she did with Mark. Debbie doesn’t give a fuck about fifteen minutes from now, or even fifteen seconds from now; she doesn’t care if this is the biggest mistake she’s ever made. She only knows that Ruth tastes good and sharp, like nothing Debbie’s ever really known before. She knows that dragging the flat pad of her tongue over Ruth’s pussy makes her whole body go taut, that tremors roll through her like controlled fireworks if Debbie uses her teeth. _I like it when a guy gets really into it, you know?_ she remembers Ruth saying once in another life, so Debbie gives it her goddamn all. 

She knows when Ruth is about to come because her toes curl and she throws a forearm over her face so she can sink her teeth into it, muffling whatever noise she might have made otherwise. It’s impossible to tell which one of them is breathing harder when Debbie emerges, cheeks and chin wet, to let Ruth kiss her again. Ruth trails her mouth down over Debbie’s tits but doesn’t linger; she remembers that Debbie’s nipples are too sensitive now to stand it. She slides down until Debbie is straddling her face, which she’s actually done so many times in this ring it’s stupid, and Debbie can’t even remember the last time someone went down on her. Mark sure as hell wasn’t good for it. 

It’s so slow and so quick. There’s still confetti on the ground from the Christmas party, which feels like it was simultaneously two minutes and two days ago. Debbie couldn’t be farther from woman who sulked at the fringes of her friends waiting for someone to pay attention to her. She bursts out of her skin and leaves that woman behind, but as soon as her heart stops hammering wildly in her chest, she slams right back into her body. For better or worse. 

She fucked _Ruth_. She can’t believe she fucked Ruth.

Debbie tries to pour herself back into her pristine white leotard, but she feels wobbly and weird, like the Blob with better eyeshadow. She doesn’t even realize she’s still shaking until Ruth lays calming hands on her shoulders, says, “Deb?”

“You think Bash will pay to clean the jizz off the ring? Jesus.” 

Ruth doesn’t laugh. She looks ridiculous, sitting there naked with busted showgirl makeup and concern in her eyes. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay, you’re okay,” Debbie says. “You’re peachy keen. You’re great. Working your way through the whole Eagan clan, huh?” 

Ruth jerks back, burned. “What the fuck, Debbie.”

“It’s a joke,” Debbie says tersely, but it’s not, not exactly. 

“I thought —” She blows out a breath. “I didn’t think it was _done_ , but I thought you’d — we’d exorcised all our demons. It’s not enough to break my ankle, you have to break my heart a few more times, too?”

“Oh, fuck off, Maggie the Cat.” 

Ruth crosses her arms. The set of her mouth has gotten tight. Was it just fifteen minutes ago that she was shaking apart on Debbie’s tongue? Did that really happen, or was it a fever dream whipped up after mixing seasonal booze with singalong power ballads? 

“Is it ever going to be okay?” Ruth demands. “Tell me. Is it ever?”

Debbie could laugh. “What, you think everything’s solved because you went down on me one time? There was a lot more to the last year and a half than sexual fucking tension, Ruth.”

Ruth actually _does_ laugh, a kind of theatrical scoff at the back of her throat. “Okay. Let’s do this one more time. The last one was dress rehearsal; this is the big show. Tell me again how much I ruined the life you don’t want to admit you didn’t even _like_.”

This time Debbie doesn’t say anything.

“Is that it? You don’t know how to be happy so you don’t ever want to give it a try?” Ruth continues. “Or do you just want to make sure I never get to enjoy anything, ever? If I get too close, you have to yank me back down to Earth. Is that it, Debbie?”

There’s an odd note of pleading in her voice, like she wants to know if that’s all it will take. _If I’m never happy again, will you finally forgive me? Will that be enough?_ Like if it was, maybe she’d do it. 

And the rational part of Debbie’s brain says _no, of course not_. But there is another part, that wild part with the snarling teeth, that does want to drag Ruth down into the pit with her. Because Ruth can get knocked down a thousand times and still pop up asking for feedback, but Debbie only knows how to smash everything around her to pieces. 

“No,” Debbie says finally, more restrained. “I don’t know. I’m a fucking mess, okay, Ruth? I know everyone thinks I’m supposed to be over it by now, but I’m not.”

Ruth wriggles back into her costume, a comedy of arms and legs flailing into the wrong places. “Well, I am. I can’t do it again. Especially not —” She gets a funny little catch in her throat. “After that.”

Debbie spends most of her time feeling like a colossal asshole, so shame has diminishing returns. But right now, wow. She sure does feel it. “I’m sorry.” She sounds tight, and not sorry, even though she is. “I just — I fucking miss you and I hate you and now, apparently —” She looks at Ruth, so earnest and so fucked, and she wants badly to stop doing the thing she always does. “Now, apparently, _this_.” 

This, Ruth’s taste still in her mouth.

“I mean… Kind of always, this,” Ruth says, stupid open like she is. “For me.” She clears her throat and drops her gaze. “Mixed in with other stuff. Sometimes I couldn’t tell if I wanted to be you, or — you know. Maybe I just wanted a little of what you had. You were always so…shiny. And I felt so dull.” 

“Yeah, me with spit up on all my clothes and sore nipples, choking on everything I feel until I puke it up on everyone around me.”

Ruth raises her eyebrows, impressed. “Well, maybe I didn’t want _that_.” 

Debbie’s laugh is abrupt and a little strangled. 

“You know, I didn’t plan this,” Ruth says. “I didn’t wake up this morning and think to myself, ‘Gee, I should make everything more complicated by putting the moves on Debbie at the Christmas party.’”

Debbie dips her head in a nod, presses her lips together. “I know.” She knows all about that; her life has turned into a series of spontaneous decisions. “And I’m…I’m sorry I did…what I do.” She clears her throat but it still takes her a minute to get the words out because her mouth doesn’t want to say them. Her brain doesn’t want to expose her to such vulnerability, fearing the sharp retribution she can dish out but not take. “I never said it, but the worst part of the last year and a half was that I didn’t have you.”

It was like someone had gouged out all the important parts of her and Debbie was walking around full of holes.

Ruth picks up the almost-empty white wine bottle that they’d set aside earlier. She hops a little closer so they’re sitting next to each other, hip to hip. She holds it up like she’s making a toast. “To a new year, hopefully,” she says. “Without the same mistakes.”

With an amused, almost silent huff, Debbie says, “Shiny new mistakes instead.”

“I mean, we already have all the major ones covered. Like: fucked your husband.”

“Broke your ankle.”

Ruth takes a swig and hands the bottle over. “Ate you out.”

Debbie laughs again, easier. Swallows wine. “Came on your face.”

“Well.” Ruth shrugs and Debbie can feel it, shoulder to shoulder. “That I didn’t mind so much.”

Debbie doesn’t let go of the bottle when Ruth moves to take it back, so they’re both left holding it, fingers overlapping. Debbie’s nails painted red, white, and blue to Ruth’s clean, bare, and filed. “Yeah,” Debbie agrees finally. “That one wasn’t so bad.”


End file.
